Stories from French History,

by Eleanor C. Price (1906) public domain

The ever-increasing taxes which supported the whole unwieldy structure of the State in its ever-growing extravagance became harder and harder to raise in a country which afforded such terrible sights as this, beheld by Jean de La Bruyere near the end of the seventeenth century as he travelled the roads of Northern or Eastern France. 

“One sees certain wild animals, male and female, scattered about the country, black, livid, and burnt by the sun; bowed to the earth which they dig and turn with invincible perseverance.  They have a sort of articulate speech, and when they rise to their feet, they show a human face: in fact, they are men.  At night they retire into dens, where they live on black bread, water, and roots.  They spare other men the labour of tilling, sowing, and reaping in order to live, and they deserve some share of the food they have sown." 

 

These were the people who paid the taxes! 

 

Even if La Bruyere's picture was of an especially poor district in a famine year, such years recurred only too often.  We know, for instance, that the saintly Arch-bishop Fenelon dared to say to Louis XIV, in 1709: 

“Your people are dying of hunger.  Instead of dragging money out of your poor people, you should support and feed them.” 

 

And the records of several other years are equally sad. 

Still, writers of the eighteenth century do show another side - fairly prosperous farms and peasants decently clothed and fed, enjoying life with the merry stoicism of their nation as long as they can cheat or satisfy the absentee landlord and the ravenous tax-gatherer. 

It would be a long and difficult task to describe correctly the state of France at this time, each province differing from another in burdens and laws as much as in soil and character.  Sometimes a story throws light on something which seems in a way common to all the millions ruled by the French king.  Such a story is the famous adventure of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 

Wandering one day, tired and hungry, among the mountains and woods of picturesque Pauphine, he asked for food at a lonely cottage.  The solitary old peasant who lived there did not refuse to feed the wayfarer; he brought him a little skim milk and barley bread chiefly made of straw; but all with a frightened and suspicious air, as if the traveller were an enemy.  Watching his guest, he changed his mind: this was no enemy, open or secret, but a frank and pleasant young man, honestly starving. 

“I see you are a good youth," he said, " and will not sell or betray me.”

 

At first Jean-Jacques did not understand.  When the peasant descended suddenly through a trapdoor, re-appearing with a loaf of pure wheaten bread, a large ham, a fat bottle of good country wine, and when he proceeded to beat up eggs and butter for an omelette, and to set an excellent meal before the still hungry traveller, and when he finally refused payment with every sign of alarm, Jean-Jacques understood still less. 
In a few trembling words the peasant explained matters.  He was not so ill off as his neighbours; he had worked hard and his little bit of land had prospered: but if the tax-collectors had any reason to suspect that he was not dying of hunger, and that there was food and wine stored in his cellar, he would be a ruined man. 

“I left his house” says Rousseau, "indignant and deeply moved."

Other most hated taxes were those on salt and tobacco, and there was constant smuggling, both on the frontier and between the provinces with their differing tariffs, in defiance of the severest penalties and in spite of the army of agents employed by the financiers to whom Louis XIV and Colbert had farmed out these and other monopolies.  The Farmers-general made gigantic fortunes, and their Collectors exacted far more than was lawfully due to them.  In these circumstances smuggling became an organized trade; even, in the eyes of the people, an heroic profession.  The risk was very great, for the punishments were terrible, ranging from the galleys to a cruel death; but nothing deterred the bands of young and daring adventurers, in many families smuggling was an inherited instinct.